Jan 9, 2023
23!
She gets to be a vampire AND a werewolf because she deserves it. As a treat
seen from United States
seen from Japan
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Australia
seen from China
seen from Japan
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Canada
23!
She gets to be a vampire AND a werewolf because she deserves it. As a treat
Bracket 1, Round 1
James Byrd (@byrdsfly) VS. James Byrd (Spyro the Dragon)
byrdsfly
Sgt. Byrd
Quick! Fill in the blank!
Did you know ___?
Did you know that despite all the monsters Laios has eaten in Dungeon Meshi/Delicious in Dungeon and his obsession with monsters, his favorite food is Cheesecake? This goes to show a lot of despite how humanity has always treated him as an outsider and how much Laios can identify that, that Laios at the end of the day is still very much human and longs to be loved and accepted by his "fellow man".
Quick! Fill in the blank!
Did you know ___?
the word nudibranh, refering to an underwater mollusc, means "naked gill"
Please elaborate on the Ganondorf Au(s), I gotta know, lol I my immediate first thought was this weird/elaborate Coffee Shop AU where Zelda and Link are running some small-time locally owned franchise (like two, maybe three stores)... and Ganondorf rolls up in some Super-Starbucks trying to take over or push them out of business... why did that come to me so quickly, lmao
OKAY S O
jesus christ this is long
i find ganondorf to be a deeply compelling character. this is in part to the way pre botw zelda games utilized him as both a villain and as this symbolic culmination of evil.
now other games may have done this, but none immediately come to mind, as one of the most compelling aspects of ganondorfs character is that before botw? every instance in every game was the SAME dude (except skyward sword but ill talk about that later). that allowed games with stronger narrative focus to flesh him out in greater detail, while a game with a more cut and dry story but flashier cinematics could really sell his menace, and future iterations could carry the boons of both.
now the zelda timeline is a mess, and the games themselves were not built around that concept. at most youd get direct sequels like majoras mask, or games directly referencing an older title as part of their history, like twilight princess. one should not take the timeline as Word Of God Canon (even though there are multiple official books that reference it), but they all kind of work together to give you a bigger picture. this is especially true for the 2d zeldas, as Ganondorf The Character wasnt really an explored concept back then. you instead had dark beast ganon (who once took human form as dude named Aganhim but hes. separate. like hes canon and important but most of what he contributes to Ganondorf As Character is the dark evil wizard vibes).
in general, when looking at ganondorfs character youll mostly be examining four titles: Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, Windwaker, and Skyward Sword. skyward sword is unique in a lot of ways because it IS made with the "zelda timeline" in mind, and is the timelines official beginning. here we get the forging of the master sword, the first imprisoning war, and! a guy that is NOT ganondorf! demon king demise is the end game boss here, and while i could dedicate a post to analyzing his limited screentime, whats important to this convo is that demise lays a curse upon his defeat. those bearing the soul of the hero (link, who reincarnates), the blood of the goddess hylia (zelda, who does not and instead has descendants inheriting power) will be caught in a cycle of war and blood with the bearer of demise's hatred (ganondorf!). and THERES the money. that last part there helps contribute a LOT to further analyzing ganondorfs character throughout these games because, as mentioned before, they build on each other!
the plot of ocarina of time is not deep. its an enjoyable game, but like most zelda entries, its a paint by numbers tale of a good hero overcoming an evil villain who kidnaps a Notable Woman as the final build towards the climax, wherein you kick his ass free the girl and kill him. (kind of. ganondorf never really DIES) HOWEVER. twilight princess, windwaker, and skyward sword, by virtue of focusing on this SAME DUDE, end up giving a LOT of retroactive depth! its a really fun phenomenon!
that tears of the kingdom throws in the fucking trash! for!! some reason!! WHY. why the hell would you spend 25 years making a layer cake piece by piece and then throw it in the trash in favor of box mix cupcakes??? I DONT GET IT MAN.
totk isnt. a BAD game per se. theres a lot to enjoy about it.
narrative is not one of those things.
tiptoeing around spoilers here but discussing them generally
the dragon tears are, among other things, about ganondorfs rise to power, to reach his current end game boss state. despite this. he has a grand total of three scenes before he GETS that power. one of which is him laughing, one of which is a poorer retelling of a scene from OoT, and the last one is his introduction where he does fuck all. WHERES THE MOTIVE HERE????
OoT is my least favorite entry of the 4 games listed above. it has a lot of dated narrative elements and systemic issues that continue to plague nintendo to this day (misogyny and racism as per usual). despite this, i find myself returning to OoTs narrative and characterization REPEATEDLY in totk because in so many aspects it just storytells better! yes totk is an open world game with a hands off narrative approach. but botw has that concept down pat and is a more satisfying experience. totk is a more narrative focused botw, and yet its storytelling sucks WORSE than botws and doesnt even measure up to OLDER TITLES. more detailed rants on that are for another time.
so what is a bitch with a special interest in zelda and a fixation on its most charismatic villain to do when presented with an otherwise enjoyable game that is deeply unsatisfying in regards to aforementioned autistic bitchs favorite villain?
obviously make an au thats TotK But Better For Me And My Bros Specifically (thanks @villalunae ily forever)
but if your gonna do that, might as well go full self indulgence, right?
due to aforementioned Ganondorf Characterization Layer Cake, theres a LOT of fun Implied Nuance to play around with, of most importance is ganondorfs relationship with the gerudo, and the gerudos relationship to hyrule. demises curse and the elements of destiny and fate add some fun compounding factors to really amp the tension up, but in my opinion only really ever serve as The Last Straw so to speak. its important that ganondorf is someone who chooses to be this way! but choices arent made in a vacuum, and prying those circumstances apart gives you so many potential ways for this to End Differently.
so seeing that TotK Ganondorf is NOT the OG OoT Ganondorf, the idea here is to further explore the concept of like. WHY is he a villain? villain is a socially constructed category afterall. how do you focus on those circumstances and their effects on a person? how does the political situation of hyrule play into this?
a personal favorite interpretation of mine (and other ppls judging by the plethora of fan content in a similar vein), is this idea of a Redeemed Ganondorf, a variation where ganondorf is NOT the final boss, but instead an ally of link and zeldas. wrt this particular au, that looks a lot like locking everyone in a room together and see who starts throwing things first.
so with that in mind, i just ended up going through scene after scene in totk and thinking of how a redeemable ganondorf would play out. what kind of personality would he have, how would he interact with these other characters, what are his relationships like? whats his driving motive, how committed to these ideas is he, whats his breaking point and why? and then playing with those ideas and throwing them against other characters, how does he interact with the sages, how does he interact with rauru, how does he interact with ZELDA?
a lot of that informs the baseline of how we ended up going through making the au (alongside a hefty dose of writers worldbuilding dilemma lmao) and also serves as the foundation of subsequent sequel aus that as of right now exist solely as amvs in my head.
so in summary theres two?? maybe 3??? that im just marinating in.
the main unnamed totk au, where the triforce trio work alongside each other to put an end to demises curse of hatred once and for all, with a large focus on character dynamics and their relationships to each other (and also plenty of self indulgence. ghirahim got tossed back in there. and fi)
and then, after that, a kind of hypothetical sequel game to totk au. set 100 years after the ending events of totk au, the trio + co navigate a world where the threat of ganondorfs rise to power is no longer the primary problem hyrule suffers, but instead a power vacuum in the realm of demons, leading to a slowly rising threat of demon incursion. focuses on how your "party" (ganondorfs reincarnation, links reincarnation, and a non-princess zelda, alongside naboorus reincarnation, and impa (neither a reincarnation nor a descendant but once again paying homage to impa as a recurring character)) gets along with each other and how, as the years go by (i have. TWO seperate time skips so far), their relationships to each other change, and how their goals and ideals grow and change in response to the shifting landscape of threat in hyrule
the last one, technically, is a modern au that mostly works as background context for triforce trio shitposting.
(ur idea for a coffee shop au is fuckn FANTASTIC btw i love it)
GOD this post got long. thanks for holdin out so long for all this! i can definitely make long as fuck posts about. p much anything in totk and how it gets changed or reinterpreted in totk au, or ganondorfs relationships in that au, because they live in my brain rent free.
What's the last video game you beat?
endoparasitic! uh, content warning for gore and parasites and other creepy shit.
you play a researcher who has 3 limbs ripped off at the start when your experiment breaks free, and you can only drag yourself around with one arm. hide from monsters, scrounge for weapons + ammo, and find a way to escape. I really like how the game handles reloading - very manually. makes for some really nice tense situations. especially later on with the [REDACTED]
downsides are the plot’s pretty basic, and sometimes instead of horror or fright you can feel tedium. there’s a long hallway where you have to menu really quickly in order to take out a bunch of dudes with just a revolver, for example. also the final boss is a pain. only bugs I experienced were some error messages showing up when I picked up certain things, otherwise played perfectly smooth.
apparently it was made in like 2 days and there’s some videos on youtube about the making of, I’m gonna give those a look through later.
bought it today, beat it today. very short game (~2hrs) but I honestly wouldn’t consider that a bad thing. I’m gonna say it’s worth it though.
Bracket 1, Round 3
@byrdsfly
James Byrd (@byrdsfly) VS. Jimmy Z (Wild Kratts)
byrdsfly
Jimmy Z
Bracket 1, Round 2
@byrdsfly
Jimmy Carter (Real Life) VS. James Byrd (@byrdsfly)
Carter
byrdsfly